Four Strategies to Jump-Start Your Teen’s College Search
Most parents feel overwhelmed by all the changes to the post-pandemic college admissions landscape. Historically high application numbers coupled with a myriad of books, webinars, and online videos all promising to unlock admission secrets leave parents wondering, “How and where do we start?”
Truth be told (and this is one of the maddening aspects of the college search and application process) is that there is no one right way. There are a number of different entry points to this journey. How your child undertakes the process is largely reflective of their personality. But, even with that in mind, there are a few effective action steps that can help to jump-start the process:
1. Encourage your child to visit three different types of college campuses first.
I typically suggest that my clients visit a large urban university, a suburban mid-size or small campus, and a rural-ish campus. It doesn’t matter if the colleges are ones that your child is actually interested in attending - although that would be great if they do (but, probably too early for them to know that). The goal with these initial visits is just to do a gut check on questions like the ones below:
Do they like the energy of the big city or do they like a small-town feel?
Does the campus feel cloistering-ly small or big and just too big?
Do they like granite, limestone, or red brick buildings?
What is the vibe of the students on campus?
What do they FEEL is missing?
Can they see themselves there or at a school with similar qualities?
What do they like most about the campus and its location, size, and energy?
These visits could be done on one or two midweek afternoons or weekends. They don’t even need to include an official tour if that makes visiting them too complicated; the point is to start with a few of these visits so that your child starts to identify the school characteristics that resonate with them. This is a journey and as such, it takes time. Clarifying the school characteristics that resonate with them will take more than 2-3 visits, but starting this way is much more fun as visiting colleges creates a sense of optimism and possibility. It’s much more engaging than reading a book filled with statistics or reading about colleges online. Trust me!
2. Read Frank Bruni’s Book, Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.
While Frank Bruni’s book was written prior to the pandemic, it is very relevant today. The premise of the book is that your child’s success is much more dependent on what they do while they are in college as opposed to where they go to college. He has lots of case studies to support his position.
For a shorter and still impactful read, you might find Rick Clark’s blog entitled, “Is That A Good School?” helpful. Rick Clark is an author, blogger extraordinaire, and the Assistant Vice Provost and Executive Director of Undergraduate Admission at Georgia Tech.
3. Encourage your child to start researching colleges, using online/web databases, and school resources. Identify those colleges that offer the best academic, social, and financial fit.
In Rick Clark’s blog to which I refer above, he states that he often finds “it surprising and disconcerting that on average people talk about restaurants with more nuance than they do colleges.” To avoid this phenomenon, I provide my students with a form on which they track a variety of data points, including three-to-five unique and intriguing facets of the academic program as well as two-to-three facets of the social/co-curricular program that make the school a good “fit” for them. Keeping notes on their college tour experiences, the information sessions they attend, and details found on the college’s website enables students to determine which schools should remain on their college list. The notes they keep will also prove helpful later in the process when they write school-specific application essays or when answering interview questions.
4. Once your child has a broad initial college list that interests them, tour those campuses as early as you possibly can!
Most families think they can wait until the summer or fall of their child’s senior year to start visiting campuses. DON’T WAIT! Use the winter and spring school breaks and weekends to visit campuses and then finish visiting campuses over the summer. These visits should be more purposeful than the initial visits I proposed above. When touring, students should consider these strategies. To help students assess colleges for “fit,” they should consider these forty questions.
It is very challenging to visit ALL of the schools on your child’s initial college list over the summer. A number of parents have shared that they wished they toured schools earlier than they did. Also, missing a day of school during the fall of one’s senior year might not be possible due to the demands of challenging classes or of fall co-curricular commitments. Visiting campuses early in the process accelerates the development of an understanding of one’s criteria for “fit” and allows students to accurately assess if a particular college will meet their needs. It’s a win-win!
As parents, we advise our children to just take that first step in any multi-stepped process. Doing so feels very empowering and fills them (and us) with a sense of agency. While your child needs to take the lead in the college search and application process, parents can support their children by encouraging them to take these initial steps.
JMT College Consulting strives to simplify the college search and application process. To learn about our services contact us for a free initial consultation and to receive a free College Application Task Timeline.